Some local towns among highest share of private school students in nation

The Greenwich Academy Class of 2012 during the graduation ceremony at the main campus in Greenwich, Thursday, May 24, 2012.

A new report published by Trulia shows that 10 percent of school kids between first and twelfth grade attend private schools. But here in southwesern Connecticut, the rate is much higher in many towns.

If you check out some of those towns with the highest saturation, you’ll see that southwestern Connecticut ranks pretty high when compared to private school hot spots around the country. According to Trulia, there are 10 U.S. metropolitan statistical areas where more than 16.7 percent of students attend private schools.

Were we to compare some of our local towns to this list, we’d find Greenwich topping the nation’s top metropolitan area, and New Canaan coming in above the No. 2.

And there wouldn’t be a single town in our corner of Connecticut with a lower private-school enrollment rate than Fresno, California, which Trulia says has the lowest of the MSAs with an enrollment rate of 3.7 percent. Here, the lowest is Oxford at 4.0 percent.